


Moments of Light

by icarus_chained



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Conversations, Doppelganger, Friendship/Love, Gen, Homecoming, Hope, Hurt/Comfort, Reunions, Survivor Guilt, Trauma, happiness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-29
Updated: 2016-05-29
Packaged: 2018-07-10 20:23:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7005046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icarus_chained/pseuds/icarus_chained
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Martin and Cisco, after Martin makes it home. Cisco tells Martin about Deathstorm, and Martin reminds Cisco that no matter what he saw in that other universe, Cisco himself could never be evil.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Moments of Light

**Author's Note:**

> Again, something of a companion to [Worth Fighting For](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6789661). I'm still not sure if this one worked for me, but I just really, really wanted this conversation. We'll see how well it goes?

It was ... so easy to talk to Cisco again. There had been, ah, a moment of consternation at the start, a half-memory of a false pretender, Valentina beneath her illusion, but it had faltered quickly. There was simply no imitating the true Cisco Ramon. The enthusiasm, the intelligence, the irreverence and the joy. There was simply no one like him.

So it had been easy to fall back into old patterns of discussion. Martin admitted that. It had been so easy to get distracted, to respond to enthusiasm so openly offered, to describe adventures and expand upon theories and ... and delight in each other's presence. Simply that, no more and no less. It was so easy to forget the shadows in each other's eyes. To ignore them, to take the respite, to offer only happiness and information and complicated mathematical theory, structures of multiversal membranes and diagrams of vectors through time. To offer only facts, and forget the pain they had so clearly caused. 

At first, anyway. Only at first. As selfish as he sometimes was, Martin could not indefinitely ignore so obvious an anguish as he saw before him now.

"... Are you going to tell me?" he asked quietly, when they had reached something of a natural lull, an ebb in the conversation while a theory glittered silently to itself between them. Cisco froze, just a little bit. Cisco looked away, that shadow falling so clearly across him once again.

"Tell you what?" he asked, with about as transparent an effort at casualness as Jefferson normally managed. Martin shook his head. He felt again that twinge inside his chest, that gentle heartbreak that these young people so often inspired in him.

"Whatever it is that ... put that pain in your eyes, when you saw me again," he answered, softly and gently. Cisco looked at him, looked back over at him, and god, it could not have been more obvious. Cisco never could hide what it was he was feeling. The young man's pain was starkly clear, and Martin couldn't bear it. "Cisco. My boy. Whatever it is, I ... You know that, that you can tell me anything. If something is hurting you, if, if _I_ have somehow hurt you--"

"It's not that," Cisco interrupted. He said it quickly, instinctively, half reaching over towards Martin. Martin reached back to him, caught his hands and held them gently. Cisco seemed to thrive on physical contact. He offered it easily, took comfort from having it offered in return. Martin held his hands and frowned at him in some concern, and Cisco hastily looked aside.

"... Cisco?" Martin asked again, now more concerned than ever. Cisco bit his lip. He shook his head and tugged his hands from Martin's hold.

"It's ... It's not you," he said, shuffling over to fiddle with random objects on their desk. "I mean, it's ... it's not _you_ you. I just, it's ... it's kind of complicated?"

Martin blinked. He thought ... ah. Yes, of course. "It's something to do with my counterpart?" he asked gently, and Cisco's head came up again, he met Martin's eyes again, his mouth twisted in trepidation. Martin nodded to himself. "Caitlin mentioned that quite a few of us were ... less than moral, in that universe. Am I to take it that my counterpart was among them?"

If his counterpart had caused Cisco harm, he couldn't blame the young man for shadows when he looked at him. Not that he would have blamed Cisco anyway, regardless of cause, but something like that, a false friend wearing a familiar face to harm you ... no, Martin would not blame Cisco for flinching from that. Even only an illusion could do significant damage, that much he knew personally, but a physical being, almost but not quite a friend ... He could well imagine the sheer distress that could cause.

But then ...

"No?" Cisco said, flinching faintly to himself. "Well, maybe. I don't know. He didn't ... I mean I didn't ... Um. I didn't get to see too much of him? I kind of ... didn't get to see him at all. I just, um. I'm ... I'm pretty sure I ... was there when he was killed?"

He curled into himself as he said it, hunched down as Martin realised that it was ... that the pain he was seeing was some terrible mixture of grief and guilt. Some terrible, wholly undeserved mixture. The latter part at least. Regardless of the circumstances, Martin could not imagine anything Cisco might have done to be ashamed of afterwards. He didn't ... the death of some other version of him was a vaguely terrible thought, but if Cisco had only barely seen him, had hardly known him at all, surely he could not have done anything ...

"He was, um. He was inside Ronnie at the time," Cisco went on, slowly and carefully. He looked over at Martin, his arms loose at his sides, his shoulders still hunched defensively. "That's why I didn't ... And, um, that Ronnie, he wasn't ... He was pretty evil? Definitely kinda evil. He called himself 'Deathstorm'. He got ... Zoom killed him. Like, right ... right there. In ... In front of Earth 2 Caitlin, too, he killed him in front of her. I mean, she was evil too, but ..."

"Oh god," Martin said. Whispered, really, closing his own eyes for just a moment. But, Cisco said. Yes. He understood that 'but'. Evil or not, how many times would Caitlin be forced to watch her husband die? Was that a ... was that some form of universal constant? How could that be fair? Of all things to tie universes together, to choose that ... 

"Oh Ronald," he said, the sheer unfairness of it rushing through him. No man deserved to have his death be a constant. No man deserved to always die where others lived. 

Though perhaps ... Cisco had said Martin, that other Martin, had been inside him at the time. He had died alongside his partner. Perhaps that ... perhaps it would go some way to balancing the scales. Not that ... Martin couldn't be happy that Cisco had _watched_ , that he had been forced to see and to grieve, but perhaps the death itself was not entirely an unfairness. Perhaps it was not completely wrong that Martin should not always survive his partner. Perhaps there was ... a certain rightness to having shared that fate at least once, in at least one world.

"Don't," Cisco said, very softly and very carefully, and Martin looked up at him in startlement. There was something odd in the young man's face, some strange distress, and he shook his head at Martin's silent query. "Don't feel ... don't feel sorry for him. Okay? Not you. Especially not you. He wasn't ... he wasn't like our Ronnie. It wasn't ..."

He trailed off. He pressed his lips together, tears springing to his eyes, and Martin found himself standing without much thinking about it. He found himself moving to the boy's side, reaching up to touch his shoulder gently in concern.

"Cisco?" he asked, his confusion painfully apparent, and Cisco seemed to crumple all at once, folding forwards into Martin's arms. Martin caught him instinctively, wrapped his arms around the boy and holding him tight. Cisco buried his face into Martin's chest. Martin could feel the tremors running through him.

"I didn't see you," he said painfully, muffled by Martin's sweater. "I never saw you. He didn't let you out. That's what he said. He hadn't let you out in years. Zoom killed him, and you died too, and he hadn't ... He'd said that you'd stopped talking. That you didn't talk anymore, that ... And then you died, then they killed you, and you'd been ... for all that time. Inside him. He wasn't a good person, he killed people, he ... he locked you up, and then you were dead. I was ... I watched that happen. I was there. I saw it."

He was shaking as he said it, not crying so much but shaking, and Martin ... couldn't say anything. Could barely even think. Valentina. Valentina, that ... He could, he could imagine it, he _knew_ ... knew exactly what that might feel like, had almost ...

He couldn't say anything. He couldn't think. He just felt Cisco shaking in his arms.

"You know the worst part?" Cisco managed eventually. Pulling back a little, looking up at him, a hurt, lopsided smile on his face. Martin stared at him helplessly. "The worst part is I forgot about it. I didn't think about it. We had ... Zoom took Barry, and we had to get him back, and then we were back here and there was ... and so much shit happened, and I never thought about it. Until you came back. Until I saw you, and then ... then I remembered what happened. What I _let_ happen."

Martin shook himself at that. Forcibly, violently, bullying himself up out of his stupor. That guilt, the shame he'd seen earlier, the shadow in Cisco's eyes. No. No, none of that. Martin had been ... he'd been right the first time. That was not deserved. None of that.

"... It wasn't me," he said eventually. Rustily, perhaps, uneasily, but he made certain to be firm, to state it only as a fact. "That, that other Martin, he wasn't me. You don't ... He might have been evil in his turn. You don't know that. Perhaps he earned everything that happened to him." Cisco opened his mouth, started to argue, and Martin shook his head. "And, regardless of that, that aside ... I'm sure there was nothing you could have done. It was not a matter of _let_ , Cisco. I know you. You would not have let anyone die if you could help it. I have every confidence of that. If my counterpart died, it was most certainly not your fault."

Cisco shook his head. He was crying now, silently, breathing wetly through his nose. He shook his head. "... I was there too," he said. "Not ... me. Other me. Reverb. He was ... He was evil too. He was ... he was in charge of Deathstorm. He was his boss, under Zoom. That means he ... He never stopped it. What happened to the other you. He never ..."

"Maybe he didn't know," Martin interrupted, fiercely and firmly. "Maybe he didn't know, maybe he couldn't have done anything even if he did. Either way, it doesn't matter. What he did, your counterpart, that is hardly a reflection on _you_. You are not _evil_ , Cisco. You are perhaps the farthest from it I have ever met. What he did cannot ... It has no impact on you, on what you have done and what you are responsible for."

And he knew, he knew where this was coming from. He remembered that conversation, all those months ago, the fear Cisco had had inside him for what he was becoming. What that ... that man had given him, the powers Eobard Thawne had caused him to develop. He knew that Cisco was afraid of becoming something evil, that the thought tormented him, but ...

But anyone who feared the thought of harming other people so much could never consciously be evil. No one who held such a horror of it inside themselves could ever consciously succumb. All the alternate universes in existence could not change what was inside the person in front of him, what was inside _this_ Cisco, here and now. And this Cisco could never be evil. It wasn't in him. Some souls were beyond corruption. All the power in the world would do nothing but make them yet more careful again. Martin believed that.

"Listen to me," he said, taking hold of Cisco's shoulders. "I know what you are afraid of. I remember it, I remember you telling me. I know what ... seeing something like that would have done to you. But you have to remember, Cisco. It wasn't you. It wasn't me. I'm here. I'm not dead. You have never let me die. You have never even thought about it. That wasn't you. It wasn't your fault."

Cisco pressed his lips together, trying to breathe, fighting against his tears. He shook his head, mute and exhausted denial. "I should have done something," he said. "Someone should have. He didn't deserve ... He was _you_. That shouldn't happen to you. Nothing like that should--"

Martin flinched a little to himself. He kept himself from looking away, if only barely, and made a decision there and then not to mention Dr Vostok anywhere in Cisco's vicinity. He would ask Caitlin and Jefferson to do the same, to keep that little adventure to themselves. Some things Cisco didn't need to know. Martin had no wish to cause him any more pain.

"... It didn't happen to me," he said carefully. Not quite lying. It hadn't happened to him. Jefferson had prevented it, had pulled him free and kept him from knowing that fate. The fact that it might have, that it almost did, was neither here nor there. _Almost_ didn't count. "It's all right, Cisco. I'm here, I'm ... I'm fine. And, even when I'm not, I have ... I have a truly excellent partner who has ... done everything in his power and more to keep me safe. Much as you have, you and everyone here. None of you have ever failed to try and keep me safe. Please don't forget that. I promise that I never have."

Cisco bit his lip. There was something, not quite a smile but getting there, fighting to emerge across his face. Martin smiled encouragingly at it. He squeezed Cisco's shoulders gently in his hands. Cisco reached up to grip his wrist. 

"Don't die out there, okay?" he asked, entirely seriously underneath a pale veneer of cheer. "You know, when you're all travelling in time and fighting immortals and saving the world and stuff. Make sure ... make sure you don't get killed, okay?"

Martin nodded. "I promise you," he said, moving his hands down to Cisco's elbows and holding gently. "I promise you I shall do my very best. I'll have help, too. Even if I forget myself and happen to be ... less than careful, I fully trust that I shall be taken to task for it in very short order." He smiled faintly, delighted as Cisco managed to do the same. "I rather fear I have ... run through quite a lot of Jefferson's patience with me. And everyone else's for that matter. They seem determined to protect me from myself regardless. I admit, I'm not sure quite what I've done to deserve it."

Cisco smiled more honestly there. A soft, warm thing, a joy and an enthusiasm freely offered. "You're you," he said, calmly and simply, as if were perfectly obvious and perfectly sufficient. "You're Professor Martin Stein. I'm pretty sure that's enough."

... Oh. Oh blast it. Martin felt his eyes welling up, bit his lip hastily to prevent it. He couldn't ... he wasn't going to crumble over that. No, most decidedly not.

"I ... I rather think you overestimate my virtues, Mr Ramon," he said, with careful lightness. "Though, ah, it has been said before that perhaps I _under_ estimate them at times. Nonetheless. I think you will find that I am far from the only person deserving of care in this room, and most certainly the least of them."

Cisco's lip wobbled, the young man clearly trembling on the brink of crumbling again himself, but he mastered it with admirable tenacity. He kept his smile upon his face with all the skill of a spirit long used to trying.

"Hey, don't knock yourself," he said quietly. "I'm getting the impression that you do that a lot these days, and you shouldn't. You're awesome, okay? You're a genius, and you're one of the nicest people I've ever met, and nobody should ever hurt you. I've seen that happen, and it shouldn't ... Things like that shouldn't happen. You shouldn't get hurt. You don't deserve that."

... For god's sake, Martin thought helplessly. Why did they do this? These ... these people, Cisco and Jefferson and Caitlin, Ronald and Barry, even Captain Hunter. Why did they just ... say these things, and do these things, and try to preserve him even from himself. Why did they think it mattered so much. It didn't, it couldn't possibly. Yet they were all so determined regardless. All of them tried, over and over again.

"... Perhaps we should make a bargain, then," he said at last, after a very long second of struggling with himself. Cisco looked at him, watched him calmly and carefully, nothing but curiosity and open honesty in his face. Martin smiled at him. He truly couldn't help himself. "You and I, Mr Ramon. Perhaps, knowing what the other thinks of us, we should ... promise to endeavour not to devalue ourselves where we can avoid it. Since ... since we know that we think so highly of each other and, as two of the most intelligent people we know, clearly we cannot both be wrong."

Cisco laughed at that. A startled, genuine huff of a thing, his smile wide and honest and amazed. A wonderful sight, Martin thought. A truly wonderful thing.

"... Yeah," the young man said, shaking his head in amazement. "Yeah, okay. I guess ... I mean, I guess that holds up. Pair of geniuses, right? Genii? We're like the best. We're good, right? I think you're good, you think I'm good, that means we're good."

"It means _something_ ," Martin agreed wryly. "Possibly that we are both delusional, but I ... I think I rather doubt that. I know you, I know I am not wrong about you, and I ... suppose that I must trust you are not wrong about me."

"I'm not," Cisco said. Instantly, certainly, with every faith. "I'm not wrong about this, about you. You shouldn't doubt that. I don't."

Martin blinked at him for a second. Just ... just in amazement. Constant, ever present. How easily they gave of themselves, these people. How casually they held out their hands, expecting little to nothing in return. How could it not humble you every time. 

"... You know, I have missed you, Cisco," he said after a moment, with soft and quiet honesty. "I truly have. You are ... You bring light to all around you. I missed that."

Cisco's face went sort of slack, his eyes wide and stunned. He didn't seem to know how to answer that, how to even accept that it had been said, and there was proof right there of how necessary their bargain might be. Martin shook his head, ignored the perpetual twinge of heartbreak, and tugged Cisco gently back in against him. Hugged him, just for another little moment, wrapped one arm around him.

"You're not evil, Cisco," he said quietly. "I have rarely known anything with the certainty that I know that. Please believe me. Of the two of us, we cannot both be wrong."

And it took a little second, it took a moment, but after it Martin felt Cisco nodding silently against his chest. He felt acknowledgement, if not yet certainty, and perhaps more hope for the future than either of them had carried previously.

It was always easy, talking to Cisco. Sometimes painful, yes, but always easy. 

Someone of such light could not be otherwise.


End file.
